The present invention relates to a color image recording apparatus, such as a color copying machine, color facsimile, or color printer, and more particularly to a color image recording apparatus having the function of being capable of specifying an editing area by drawing a marker dot at an arbitrarily selected position in a closed area within an image.
A digital color copying machine includes an image reading means for reading an original sheet by scanning it, an image editing means for processing and editing the image data thus read, an image output means for recording the image data processed and edited, and a control means for controlling the image reading means, the image editing means, and the image output means and are capable of executing various editing processes on the image data with the image editing means. Further, the digital color copying machine has come to employ highly advanced digital color image processing techniques in the recent years, so that such a machine has realized a large number of color image editing functions.
Incidentally, an image on a black-and-white original sheet may contain a closed area such as a table or a circular graph drawn therein, and it is desired from time to time to execute such an editing process as extraction (trimming) or deletion (masking) on the inside of such a closed area. Also, it is desired in some cases to form an arbitrarily determined closed area in an image on an original sheet, using an editing pad comprised of a digitizer or drawing the closed area in the image on the original sheet by a marking pen having a predetermined color, and to give various editing processes to the image inside the closed area.
For these purposes, a method has been proposed in which a bit map plane memory (which will be hereafter referred to simply as "plane memory") is used for searching for a closed area set up by the user. A summary description of the method is given as follows.
FIG. 26 is a schematic diagram showing a construction to be used in search for a closed area. Now, it is assumed that a closed area is drawn in an original sheet in black and white and that one point in the closed area is specified by means of an editing pad. The data on the coordinates for the point specified in this manner are notified to and taken into a graphic controller 101. First, a prescanning operation is performed on the original sheet, the image data thus read being converted into binary values, further subjected to a conversion of the pixel density as appropriate, and then written to a plane memory 103 by way of a direct memory access controller (DMAC) 102 under control performed by the graphic controller 101, and the image on the original sheet as converted into binary values representing black and white is thereby written to the plane memory 103. The conversion of the pixel density is done in order to limit the capacity of the plane memory 103 to a necessary minimum. In this case, the image on the original sheet is read at 400 spi and the data thus read are subjected to a density conversion into data at 100 spi and fed into the DMAC 102. As the construction for use in performing such a conversion of pixel density is generally known in the art, it is omitted from the description given here. Moreover, various ways are conceivable for the method of determining whether the pixel should be made black or white after a density conversion, but one pixel after such a density conversion is to be made black in case even one black pixel is included in the read 4.times.4 pixels.
Now it is assumed here that 15 closed areas in the maximum can be set up in one original sheet and that mutually different editing processes can be done at the same time on the individual closed areas thus set up. Then, as data in four bits are necessary for distinguishing the 15 closed areas, the plane memory 103 is in need of four sheets of bit map plane memories, and it can be understood here that one bit can thereby be given to each plane memory, so that it is possible to construct data in four bits as a whole. Moreover, it is to be noted in this regard that these four-bit data will be referred to as "area command (ACMD)" hereinafter. In addition, the plane memory 103 also needs a plane for conducting a search for a closed area.
An example of the construction of the plane memory 103 is shown in FIG. 27. The plane memory 103 is comprised of a random access memory (RAM) having word addresses from O.sub.H to BEB8F.sub.H (wherein H indicates a hexadecimal number, and this applies in the same manner to the notations used in the subsequent part), and these areas are divided into a work plane P.sub.W, a mask plane P.sub.M, and four planes from P.sub.3 to P.sub.0 in which the area command is actually stored.
Now, it will be described, with reference to FIG. 28, how a search for a closed area is performed, and how an ACMD will be formed as the result of such a search, with the system in the construction described above. FIG. 28 is a conceptual chart illustrating the process for the formation of an ACMD in a work plane P.sub.W and a mask plane P.sub.M, and it is assumed here that the value of the pixel is "1" in the areas indicated with the slant lines and also that the value of the pixel is "0" in the other areas. First, the image data are written in regular sequence to the work plane P.sub.W as illustrated in FIG. 28A. At this moment, the mask plane P.sub.M is in a cleared state as shown in FIG. 28F. When the writing of the data to the work plane P.sub.W is completed, the graphic controller 101 paints out the pixels on the mask plane P.sub.M with "1" (FIG. 28G) with respect to those pixels present within a sphere in which the value of the pixel is "1," namely, a closed area which is defined with a contour line, in such a manner that the painting operation will center around the points Q and R (See FIG. 28B) which the user has specified, on the basis of the data on the point coordinates which a Central Processing Unit (CPU) (not shown in FIG. 26) has notified to the graphic controller 101. By the effect of this, no such painting out will be done on the mask plane P.sub.M in any closed area in which such inside points are not specified, as indicated by reference numeral 112 in FIG. 28A, and any such closed area will be ignored even if there is any other area drawn in the image of the original sheet.
Next, the graphic controller 101 copies the pattern written in the mask plane P.sub.M to the work plane P.sub.W as shown in FIG. 28C. At this moment, the mask plane P.sub.M is in the state as illustrated in FIG. 28H and is thus put in the same state as that shown in FIG. 28G. When the copying of the pattern from the mask plane P.sub.M to the work plane P.sub.W is completed, the graphic controller 101 erases the pattern present on the mask plane P.sub.M (See FIG. 28I) and copies the pattern data to the area on the mask plane P.sub.M (See FIG. 28J), painting with the address of the corner S (See FIG. 28E) on the work plane P.sub.W specified as the starting point. At this time, the values of the pixels will be reversed, so that the pixels in the value "1" will have the value replaced with "0" while the pixels in the value "0" will have the value replaced with "1".
With the operations described above, it is possible to extract the contour line for a specified closed area, and, after this operation, the graphic controller 101 develops the pattern present on the mask plane P.sub.M from the specified points Q and R to the planes P.sub.3 to P.sub.0, at which the graphic controller 101 allocates an ACMD consisting of four bits to each closed area. Now, let us assume that the CPU assigns F.sub.H to the closed area containing the specified point Q therein and E.sub.H to the closed area containing the specified point R therein. The graphic controller 101 writes values to the planes P.sub.3 to P.sub.0, taking the plane P.sub.3 as the most significant bit and the plane P.sub.0 as the least significant bit, and an ACMD as shown in FIG. 29 is thereby generated. In this regard, the area commands for the individual closed areas are designed in such a manner that the specified points will be allocated, for example, from F.sub.H to O.sub.H in the registered sequence or in the sequence reverse to the registered one.
The ACMD, which has been generated in this manner, will be read out of the plane memory 103 in synchronization with an operation for reading an image on the original sheet at the time of a copy scanning operation, which is performed for making an actual copy, being then subjected to a conversion of its pixel density from 100 spi into 400 spi, and being thereafter fed to the editorial work processing block. This series of operations will execute an editing process as set in respect of each closed area.
The description given above relates to a case in which the graphic controller 101 extracts a closed area drawn in an image on the original sheet, thereby searching for a closed area to be edited. The graphic controller 101 will perform the same operations in search for a closed area also with respect to a closed area drawn with a marking pen and a closed area indicated on an editing pad.
However, the conventional method requires that the points specified for a search for a closed area should be entered by operations on an editing pad, and, in case the operator has to execute an editing process on many closed areas, this requirement presents the problem that the operator tends to forget to which of the closed areas he has specified the points.